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AMERICA FOR FREE WORKING MEN! 



EEAD! 



HOW SLAVERy INJURES THE FREE WORKING 



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THE SLAVE-HOLDER 



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FREE WORKING-MAN'S WORST ENEMY. 



By CHABLES NORDHOFF. 



NEW YOEK : 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

1865. 



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PAKTS OF THIS PAMPHLET HAVE APPEAKED IN THE EDITOKIAL 
COLUMNS OF THE NEW YOKK "EVENING POST." 



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7 



How tie Slavelioldefs Injure Free Woflingmen, 



When a slave commits murder in Virginia, or any of the 
other Slave States, he is hanged, and his owner is paid for him 
tlie price lie could have sold him for before the crime was com- 
mitted. He is paid for the slave out of the treasury of the State ; 
that is to say, the tax-2>ayers jm y the slaveliolder for Ms slave. 

When a farmer's bull does mischief and is killed, does the 
State pay the farmer ? Wlien a farmer's horse becomes unman- 
ageable and is killed, does the State pay for ]iim ^ Not at all. 
It is only the slave, the peculiar property of tlie rich, tin- whom 
the tax-payers are taxed. The poor man's horse or cow may be 
killed without payment to the owner, 

FREE WORKINGMEN, AS SLAVE-GrARDS, 

In the Slave States, whether in the city or in the country, 
a patrol of the white men is kept up at night — for Avhat i 
To secure the persons and property of free workingmen i jSTot 
at all ; but to look after the slaves of the rich : to present tlu^ 
slaves from running away ; to keep them from visiting strange 
plantations ; to catch them and bring them back, if the}' stray 
into the woods. " An ordinance ora-anizinc: and establishincf 
patrols for the police of slaves in the Parish Court of St. Landry, 
in Louisiana," which lies before us, describes minutely the or- 
ganization of such patrols. " Every free white male person, 
between the ages of 16 and 60," is bound to do patrol duty. 
The parish (county) is to pay for " all books, blanks, papers, 
laws, ifec, required for the organization of the patrols." Captains 
of patrols are to see that the enrollment for this duty includes 
every man ; and anyone who neglects or refuses to serve, " at 



4 HOW SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WORKINGMAN. 

any hour of the day or night" which may be appointed, shall be 
fined or imprisoned. Six pages of the pamphlet are then taken 
up with defining the powers and duties of the patrols towards 
the slaves. They have no other duty to perforin, as the title, 
indeed, asserts. They are " patrols for the police of the slaves." 
They are not to look out for horse-thieves, or to hunt for stolen 
cattle ; it is made no part of their duty to guard the lives and 
property of the white workingmen of the county. " Every free 
white male, between 16 to 60," in the county is required to 
mount guard over the peculiar property of the few wealthy 
planters. 

Now the parish of St. Landry had, in 1860, according to the 
census, 10,703 whites, and 11,436 slaves. According to the last 
census there were 3,953,587 slaves, and somewhat less than 400,- 
000 slaveholders in the country — an average of ten slaves to 
each owner. At that rate the slaves in the parish of St, Laudry 
would be owned by eleven hundred and forty-three of the 
10,703 whites (for children and women own slaves as well as 
men) ; and the ichole free jpopidation of the county was taxed^ 
in time, labor, and money, to care for the jproj)erty of a little 
moi'e than a tenth, and those the wealthiest ])art. 

Do not suppose that the white workingmen of the Slave States 
have not felt the oppression of this burden. Where they have 
been permitted, they have complained. Thus, in an address of 
Mr. Pierpoint, of Virginia, delivered in 1860, he retnafked : 

" The clerk or mechanic needs no protection of the law ; he 
is one of the sovereign hody guard to protect and lieep in suh-^ 
ordination the master's slaves. Yet his income — the labor of 
his weary hand and aching head, is taxed two per cent, to buy 
arms and erect armories in which to manufacture the muni- 
tions of war, with which to equip himself, to defend the master 
in his right to his slaves^'' 

An address to the working people of Yirginia, in 1860, called 
attention to the fact that " if a bull or a steer of one of our far- 
mers becomes vicious, so as to be a public nuisance, he is or- 
dered by the law to be killed, and his loss falls upon his owner, 
and upon him alone ; but if it happens that a slave of one of the 
Eastern Yirginia capitalists becomes vicious and commits crime, 



X^f 



THE FEEE LABOEER AND THE SLAVE. 



he is hanged or transported, and it is provided hy law that Ms 
oione?' shall he paid his assessed value out of the State Treasury. ^^ 
The appropriation, by the Virginia Legislature, in 1856, for 
patrols, and as pay to slave owners for vicious slaves hanged or 
transported, amounted to over forty thousand dollars ! At the 
same time, every laboring man in the State, with an income 
above $250 per annum, had to pay a heavy income tax, while 
the slaves of the rich were almost totally exempted from taxa- 
tion. 

THE FKEE LABORER AND THE SLAVE. 

Mr. Lincoln has been at difierent times reproached by the 
professed abolitionists, who, as eager as he has been cautious, 
have charged him with being something like a cold friend to 
freedom. This opinion of him arises from the fact that there is 
a diiference between their respective points of view. Thev, as 
philanthropists, have become accustomed to look chiefly at the 
wrongs suffered by the slave ; and they seek emancipation as a 
measure of justice to the blacks. Mr. Lincoln, as a statesman, 
occupies broader and truer ground ; he desires the emancipation 
of the slaves as a measure of justice to the free white woi'lc^ 
ingman / he sees that slavery oppresses not merely the slave, 
but also the free laborer, wherever it is tolerated, and that the 
destruction of slavery would be the emancipation, not only of 
tlie slave, but of the whole down-trodden working class. 

The system of bond-labor is antagonistic to that of free lcd)or, 
and breeds in the masters a contempt for the workingman, as well 
as for his vocation. This is perfectly natural, and indeed unavoid- 
able. The slam-ovmer is a competitor in the slave-marJcet against 
the free lOorMngman. He lives upon the labor of his slaves, 
and he regards with dislike the free laborers who come into 
the market to bid against him and the labor he controls. 

This fact is notorious in the South. It has long attracted the 
attention of free white workingmen there, but they have 
been too weak to resist the powerful slave-holders. In 1860, 
Eobert C. Tharin, of Alabama, once a law-partner of the 
notorious William L. Yancey, endeavored to setup a newspaper 
called the JSi'on-Slaveholder, to urge the passage of a law forbid- 
ding the employment of slaves except in agricultural labor and as 



6 HOW SLAVEEY INJURES THE FEEE WOKKINGMAN. 

servants. He thus soiiglit to protect the free mechanics, and 
secure them employment. For this Mr. Tharin was summarily 
driven from the State. 

Mr. Tharin, exposing tlie sopistries of William L. Yancey, 
writes : 

" He had seen the rich man's negro ' come in contact' with 
the poor white blacksmith, the poor white bricklayer, carpenter, 
wheelright, and agriculturist. He had seen the ])re;ference in- 
variably given to the rich viands negro in all such pursuits and 
trades ; like me, he had heard the com2)laints of the poor wliite 
mechanic of the South against this very negro equality the rich 
planters were rapidly bringing about. These things he had heard 
and seen in Charleston, l^ew Orleans, Mobile, Montgomery, 
and Wetumpka. 

" Have not the x^lanters/c^r years condemned every mechanic 
in the South to negro equality f exclaims Mr. Tharin. "I 
never envied the planters of Wetumpka, or, indeed, of any part 
of the South. My dislike to them arose from their contemptible 
meanness, their utter disregard of decency, their supercilious 
arrogance, and their daily usurpations of powers and privileges 
at variance with my riglits, and the rights of my class." 



FREE WOEKINGMEN MUST GIVE WAY TO SLAVES. 

In 1853 the free mechanics of Concord, Cabarras county, North 
Carolina, held a meeting, at which they complained that the 
''■ wealthy owners of slave mechanics were in the habit of under- 
bidding them in contracts^'' The free mechanic who led in this 
movement was driven from the town. A Long Island carpenter 
removed to a southern town ; he was asked for an estimate for 
certain work in his trade. The person who proposed to have 
it done demurred at the price, and remarked that he cotdd do 
better to buy a caiyenter, let him do the Work and sell him 
again when it was done. The free carpenter, being a man of 
sense, packed up his tools and returned to l^cw York, where 
a rich man cannot buy a carpenter and sell him again. 

Olmsted relates, in his " Texas Journey," tliat at Austin, the 
capital of the state, the German mechanics complained that 
when the labor for building the state capital was given out, 
many of them came with offcrB, but were underbid by the 



2T9 



FEEE WORKINGMEN MUST GIVE WAT TO SLAVES. 



owners of slave-'ineohmiios. But whea the free mechanics had 
left town, in search of employment elsewhere, the slave owners 
threw up their contracts, and, having no longer any opposition, 
obtained new contracts at advanced prices. 

In the iron mines and furnaces near the Cumberland river, 
in Tennessee, before the war, several thousand men found em^ 
ployment — but almost without an exception they were slaves. 
One company had a capital of $700,000 — and owned seven hun- 
dred slaves. Of eourse an equal number of free loorhnen were 
robbed of employment, and had either to starve, or emigrate to 
tJie Free States, as so many thousands have done. 

THE " FAT " FOK THE SLAVE, AKD THE " LEAN " FOR THE FKEE 
W()RKINGMAX. 

Printers call that work which is most quickly and easily done, 
and which is the best paid, " fat ; " that which is hard to do aud 
poorly paid, they call "lean."" ISTow, in all mechanical and 
other labor performed in the Slave States, the slave constantly 
gets the best, the easiest — the fat • the free mechanic or laborer, 
if he is employed at all, gets only the leavings of the slave, the 
lea7i. This comes about, because the slave-owner is a wealthy 
and influential man, who is able to select the lightest tasks for 
his slave ; by this the slave-owner of course makes the greatest 
profit, and incurs the least expense. But the free white work- 
inofman must stand aside, or take that task which the slave-owner 
will not have. 

In Yirginia, a wealthy slave-owner told Olmsted that he used 
Ilussey's reaper rather than McCormick's, because " it was more 
readily repaired by the slave-blachsmith on the farm." Another 
planter in Virginia employed a gang of Irishmen in draining 
some land. Bat mark the reasons he gave for this use of free 
labor. " It's dangerous work" (unwholesome), said he ; " and a 
negro's life is too valuable to he risked at it. If a negro dies, it 
is a considerable loss, you know." This slaveholder did not care 
how many Irishmen died in his malarious ditches. So, too, on 
the southwestern steamboats, slaves are employed to do the 
lightest and least dangerous labor / but Irish and German free 
worhingmen are employed to perform the exhausting and dan- 



8 now SLAVEKY I2irJURES THE FREE WOEKINGMAN. 

gerous ivorh. Thus, on tlie Alabama river, Olmsted observed 
tliat slaves were sent npon tlie bank to roll down cotton bales, 
bnt Irislimen w^ere kept below to drag tliem away. The mate 
of tlie boat said, by way of explanation, " The niggers are worth 
too much to be risked here ; if the Paddies are Icnocked over- 
loard, or get their hachs hrdke^ nobody loses anything.'''' 

Alfred E. Matthews, of Starke county, Ohio, in his " Journal 
of his Flight" from Mississippi, in 1861, remarks: '■'■ I have seen 
free white mechanics obliged to stand aside while their families 
were suffering for the necessaries of life, when slave mechanics, 
owned ly rich and influential men, coidd get lylenty of worTc ; 
and I have heard these same white mechanics breathe the most 
bitter curses against the institution of slavery and the slave 
aristocracy." In his journal at Columbus, Mississippi, he writes : 
" Business is very dull. Many of the free white mechanics have 
nothing to do, and there is a great deal of suffering amongst 
them. Most of what little work is to be done is given to the slave 
mechanics. An intelligent carpenter, an acquaintance of one of 
the persons in the office where I was engaged, came up one day 
and told his friend that his family were suffering for provisions ; 
he had no money, and could not get work at anytliing. He 
assured me this was the case with others of his acquaintance." 
This was in a town of three thousand five hundred inhabitants. 

SLAVES AEE TRAINED TO MECHANICAL PUESIJITS. 

On a rice plantation in South Carolina the planter showed 
Mr. Olmsted " shops and sheds at which blacksmiths, carpenters, 
and other mechanics — all slaves — were at work." Of course, 
this planter emjfloyed no free mechanics. Indeed, the writer 
of this pamphlet was told by a M^ealthy Alabamian in 1860, that 
^7ie ^Z«?^fer5 in his region were determined to discontinue alto- 
geiher the employment of free mechanics. " On my own place," 
said this person, " I have now slave carpenters, slave blacksmiths, 
and slave wheelrights, and thus 7 am indei^endent office me- 
chanics.'''' 

These instances, culled from southern life, show the bearing 
of the slave system upon the free working population. The 
planters do not need the assistance of the free laboring class ; 
they despise it, and discourage it. What is the result ? Let 



^f/^ 



SLAVES ARE TRAINED TO MECHANICAL PURSITITS. 9 

^' mudsill" Hammond, Governor of South Carolina, bear wit- 
ness. In an address before the South Carolina Institute, some 
years ago, he said : 

" According to the best calculations which, in the absence of 
statistic facts, can be made, it is believed that of the three hun- 
dred thousand wliite inhabitants of South Carolina there are 
not less than lifty thousand whose industry, such as it is, is not 
in the present condition of things, and does not promise here- 
after, such a support as every white person in this country is and 
feels himself entitled to." 

In another part of his address he said : " Eighteen or at most 
nineteen dollars will cover the whole necessary annual cost of a 
full supply of wholesome and palatable food, purchased in the 
market," for one person in South Carolina. It would seem, 
therefore, that so completely had the slave system robbed the 
free %oorldncjman of the oj^portunity to make an honest liveli- 
hood, that one-sixth of the free white po^pulation of South Ca- 
rolina could not earn even the jMtry sum of eighteen dollars per 
annum ! So completely have the slaveholders monopolized the 
labor market for their slaves ! 

The bitter hatred of the " free white" in the South for the 
negro has been often spoken of. Does any one wonder at it, 
when he considers that these free men feel the wrongs they 
puffer, but are too ignorant to trace them to their sources ? They 
hate the slaves, but if they were somewhat more intelligent they 
would hate the slaveholders, who are the authors of all their 
woes. It is because Mr. Lincoln, himself a southern man, and 
a son of one of the oppressed and expatriated free workingmen 
of the South, understands this, that he will not suffer the re-esta- 
blishment of the iniquitous class of monopolists of labor, whose 
hatred for free workingmen has dragged the country into a civil 
war. He aims, not so much to free the slave, as to free the 
loorhingmen. He sees, as a stateman, that a system which degrades 
and discourages free labor, and whose supporters hate and refuse 
to employ free workingmen, is ruinous to the prosperity of the 
country, and is necessarily the parent of constant dissensions, the 
fruitful source of hatreds, jealousies and heart-burnings. He 
knows as a stateman, that the security of free government rests 
upon the virtue, intelligence and prosperity of the working class ; 
2 



10 HOW SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WORKINGMAN. 

and that if we desire the perpetuity of our Union and liberties, 
^ve must sweep out of tlie way a system whose constant and ne- 
cessary tendency is to impoverish and debase the free workingman. 

WllM FliEE ANOKKIXGMEX HATE THE SLAVES. 

Tliey hate the slaves because slavery oppresses them. Turn 
where he will, the southern free meohanio and laborer Jinds the 
negro slave preferred lefore him. The planter has his slave 
blacksmith, his slave carpenter, his slave wheelwright, his slave 
engineer, if he needs one. It is now as it was in Marion's day, 
who said : " The people of Carolina form two classes— the rich 
and the poor. The poor are generally very poor, because, not 
heing necessary to the rich^ who have slaves to do all their woi'l\ 
they get no employment from them." 

The slaveholders have the political power ; they look only to 
their own interests ; and e\en Adhere they have established ma- 
nufactures, they have given work l)y preference to slaves over fi-ee 
men and women. " We are heginmng to laanvfacture with 
slaves'' wrote Governor Hammond of South Carolina, in 1845, 
to Thonuis Clarkson. A writer in the Augusta Constitutionalist. 
(pioted approvingly by De Bow, in 1852, said, " for manufectur- 
ino' in the hot and lower latitudes, slaves are peculiarly quahfied, 
ami the time is approching when they will le sought as the ope- 
rative most to le 2)1'^^' ''red and depended on. I could name 
factories in South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia, where the 
success of hlach labor has been encouraging." At the Saluda 
Factory, near Columbia, South Carolina, so long ago as 1851, 
one hundred and twenty-eight operatives were employed— a/^ 
slaves. " Slaves not sufficiently strong to work in the cotton 
lields can attend to the looms and spindles," wrote the superin- 
tendent of this mill ; and he showed liow these slaves under- 
worked the free whites : 

'^ Averaf'-e cost of a slave operative, per annum 8T5 

" kvcrage cost of a white operative, at least 106 

" Difference $31 

" Or over thirty per cent, saved in the labor alone by using only 
the weakly and deformed slaves." 



^f/ 



WHY FREE WORKINGMEN HATE THE SLAVES, H 

Free labor is killed hy such unnatural comrpetition . A writer 
upon manufactures in the South, in 1852, compared the wages 
paid to operatives in Tennessee with those in Lowell ; " In Lowell, 
labor is paid the fair compensation of eighty cents per day for 
men, and two dollars per week for women, while in Tennessee 
the average compensation for labor does not exceed fifty cents 
per day for men, and one dollar and twenty-five cents per M'eek 
for women." Another writer said : " A female operative in the 
jSTew England cotton factories receives from ten to twelve dollars 
per month; tliis is more than a female slave generally hires for 
in the southwest P This was twelve years ago. But he goes 
on to explain how the slaveholder^ monopolizing the labor of his 
slaves, has the power to control the labor market and underlid 
the free worhman under any circuinstances. " It matters 
notliing to him (the slaveholder) how low others can produce the 
article ; he can produce it lower still, so long as it is the best 
use he can make of his labor, and so long as that labor is worth 
keeping." That is to say, a free white mechanic is at the mercy 
of his neighbor, the capitalist, in a slave state, because, if the ca- 
pitalist does not like his price, he can " go and huy a carpenter and 
sell him again when the work is cloned Thus, while it is true 
that in the long run and on the average free labor is always 
cheaper than slave labor, the capitalist who monopolizes the 
slave labor is able to drive out or starve out the free laborer^ 
over whom he and his slaves have an unfair advantage. The 
slaveholders used to boast that there were no " strikes" in the 
South— here we see the reason. The writer we have quoted 
adds : 

" It is a fact that slaves learn hlacksmithing , carpentering, 
hoot and shoemahing, and in fact cdl handicraft trades, with as 
much facility as white men y and. 21r. Deering of Georgia, has 
employed slaves in his cotton factory for many years vnth de- 
cided success.^^ 

PKEE WORKINGMEN ARE " PESTS TO SOCIETY.'' 

Olmstead, when he asked in the slave states why the white 
laboring men were not employed, was told that they were not 
hired " because you cannot drive- them as you do a slave." The 
aristocratic slave-owner refuses to employ a ujorhnan whom he 



12 now SLAVEEY INJURES THE FEEE WORKINGMAN. 

cannot flog and curse. On a rice plantation in Soiitli Carolina 
he found a slave engineer^ for whose education in that profession 
his owner had paid five hundred dollars to a steam-engine builder. 
This slave machinist, an able man, lived hetter than any laboring 
free white man in the district. His master, who also owned slave 
blacksmiths, carpenters, and other mechanics, did not employ a 
single freeman.^ except an overseer. But an estate of the same size 
and value in a free state would have given employment to twenty- 
five or thirty white mechanics of different trades, not to speak 
of a large number of free laborers. 

By the census of 1850 it appears that the average wages of the 
female operatives in the Georgia cotton factories were $7 39 per 
per month ; in Massachusetts it was $11 57 per month. Kew 
England factory girls were induced by the special ofler of high 
wages to go to Georgia to work in newly-established cotton 
factories, but they found the position so unpleasant, owing to 
the general degradation of the laboring class, they were very 
soon forced to return. ISTor shall we wonder at this when we 
read the following sentiment, which appeared in the Charleston 
Standard, in 1855 : 

" JL large portion of the mechanical force that migrate to the 
South are a curse instead of a blessing ; they are generally a 
worthless, unprinciijled class, enemies to our peculiar institution 
(slavery), and formidable barriers to the success of our native 
mechanics (slaves). Not so, however, with another class who 
migrate southward — we mean that class known as merchants ; 
they are generally intelligent and trustworthy, and they seldom 
fail to discover their true interests. They become slaveholders 
and landed proprietors ; and in ninety-nine cases out of a hun- 
dred they are better qualified to become constituents of our 
institution than a certain class of our native born, who from 
want of capacity are perfect drones in society, continually carp- 
ing about slave comp>etition. * * * The mechanics, the most 
of them, are yests to society, dangerous among the slave popula- 
tion, and ever ready to form combinations against the interests 
of the slaveholder.-' 

Is it strange that the ignorant, neglected, despised free white 
workingman of the slave states hates the slave ? He feels that 
the slave injures him in every possible way ; the slave robs him 



FKEE WOKKINGMEN ARE " PESTS TO SOCIETY." 13 

of work ; tlie slave deprives him of "bread and clothing for his 
children ; the slave gets the easiest tasks, the free laborer the 
hardest and most dangerous ; the slave steps before him when- 
ever he looks for a job, and has the preference everywhere, 
because he is the tool of a capitalist lohose influence and wealth 
enable him to grasp — for his own benefit — whatever might be of 
advantage to the free mechanic or laborer. 

The capitalist, in a slave state, is a man with a hundred black 
arms, all bare, all eagerly seeking work, all ready to work for 
less than a free man can support his family decently upon. The 
capitalist is a hundred-armed workman, with enough social 
influence to command work for all his hundred arms, to the 
exclusion of the honest free mechanic and laborer. The slave, 
in the hands of this capitalist, is the most dangerous enemy the 
free workman can have. Suppose a job of work for twenty 
mechanics is to be given out in a southern town— twenty free 
men offer themselves— but a slave-owner comes, with the prestige 
of great wealth, with liis social influence and his p»olitical power, 
and he gets the preference for liis twenty slaves, the profits of 
whose labor go to mciTce him ricJier^ lahile Ids free neighbors 
grow poorer. It is not strange that the southern free working- 
men resent this monstrous wrong — but it is lamentable that they 
make the error of hating the tools with which the wrong is done, 
and not those who use these helpless tools, and the iniquitous 
system which permits it. It is as though a martyr should abhor 
only the thumb-screws which torture him, but regard kindlj^ the 
executioner who applies them ; it is as though a western traveller 
should complain of the scalping knife, but love the Indian 
savage who uses it. 

It is the slave-holder who wrongs the free workingman. It is 
the slave system which oppresses him. Make the slave free and 
he is no longer your fatal competitor ; take the slaves away from 
the capitalist, and he has no longer the power to rob you of work 
and bread. Free the negroes, and you redeem the free white 
working-class from the domination of the selfish capitalists, and 
make tlie blacks themselves harmless to you. It is only while 
they are slaves that the negroes injure the white working 
men. 



14 HOW SLAVERY INJTJEES THE FEEE WORKINGMAN. 

HOW FREE WOEKIXGMEN ARE OVERTAXED IN SLAVE STATES. 

We have shown how the slave-labor system robs the free 
workingman, the free mechanic and laborer, of employment and 
bread, and thus keeps him poor and helpless — or drives him into 
the free states. But the subjection of free labor in slave states 
does not stop there. Kot only is the free workingman con- 
demned by the monopolists of slave labor to idleness and pov- 
erty, but his children are held in ignorance ; his political rights 
are cunningly abridged ; the products of his labor are forced to 
bear an unequal burden of taxation ; and he — the non-slave- 
holding workingman — is compelled by the laws to mount guard 
over the slaves of his wealthy neighbor, or else to pay for such 
a guard. Thus he is injured in every interest, for the benefit of 
the slaveholder. 

In the free states of the Union a poor man's vote counts aS 
much as his wealthy neighbor's, and the millionaire enjoys no 
special political privileges over the carpenter who builds his 
house, or tlie blacksmith who shoes his horse. We are accus- 
tomed to think this a good system, but how is it in tlie slave 
states? Take Yirginia as an example. There, while in one 
branch of the Legislature men are represented, in the other 
money and slaves have also a large representation. 

So great was this political power of wealth, that before the 
war ten thoumnd lohite men — slaveholders — in Eastern Fir- 
glnia had as much powder — as many votes — in the Senate, as 
forty thousand white men — non-slavebolders — of Western Vir- 
ginia. 

How did the slaveholders, tlie aristocrats of Eastern Virginia, 
use this power ? They exempted a great yart of their peculiar 
property from taxation^ and laid the burden of taxes upon the 
free w^orkingmen of the state. They enacted a law by which 
all slaves under twelve years of age were exempted from taxation 
altogether — hut they taxed the calves, the colts, the lamhs^ of the 
farmers. They limited the tax upon slaves over twelve years 
to one dollar and twenty cents per head ; but they taxed a 
trader with a capital of only six hundred dollars, sixty dollars 
for his first year's license, and a heavy duty on his sales after- 
wards. The slave property of Yirginia, before the war, paid about 



xfS 



HOW FEEE WOEKINGMEN ARE OVERTAXED IN SLAVE STATES. 15 

$300,000 per annum taxes — but if it had teen taxed as other 
property was, according to value, it woidd have contrihuted 
one million three hundred thousand dollars per annum ! Tlie 
odd million was raised by extra taxes on tlie earnings of the 
free laborers. 

Not only tins — the products of slave labor were also exempted 
from taxation. Tobacco, corn, wheat and oats were not taxed ; 
but the product of free labor, consisting of cattle, hogs, sheep, 
&c., was heavily taxed ; as were also the earnings of free 
labor'ing men, who were obliged to pay an income tax. It was 
asserted by Mr. Peirpoint, in 1860, that " upwards of two hun- 
dred and thirty million dollars of the Virginia slaveholders' 
capital in slaves was exempted from taxation^ 

But while the slave owner was so protected, see how it fared 
with the free laborer? Ev^ery free mechanic, artisan, or laborer 
of whatever kind, who was in the employment of any person, 
was obliged, by a special law, to pay an income tax of one-half 
of one per cent, if his income did not exceed $250 : of one per 
cent, if his income was under $500 ; of one and a half per cent, 
if it was under §1,000, and two per cent, if he earned over 
$1,000. Our workingmen think the United States income tax 
onerous ; but that, at least, exempts the man who earns less 
than $600, The Virginia slaveholders exempted only themselves ! 
They taxed the poor, but left the the rich to pay nothing. 



ENORMOUS AND UNEQUAL TAXA.TION OF FREE WOEKINGMEN IN 

VIRGINIA. 

See how this act worked. In Wheeling there were employed 
in 1859 about 1,500 free men in the iron mills; these earned an 
average of $400 per annum each. On this they had to pay one 
per cent. — four dollars — making $6,000 per annum ; besides 
eighty cents poll tax, $1,200 more; total $7,200, drawn from 
1,500 free laboring men. Now this tax was equal to that 
levied on six thousand slaves. That is to say, each free 
workman was taxed four times as heavily as a slave. But take 
note of this : the owner of the slave was not only very lightly 
taxed for his property in him ; he paid no income tax at all. 
That is to say, the net income from the labor of six thousand 



16 now SLAVEEY IXJUEES THE FREE WORKINGMAJT. 

slaves might be reckoned in those times at |900,00Grper annum. 
On this the masters, the capitalists, who received this sum, paid 
not a cent of income-tax ! Or, take another example : a foreman 
in a factory earned $1,100 per annum; he had to pay §22 80 
income tax to the State. But a slave-owning capitalist paid no 
more than that as his tax on nineteen slaves ; he trained them 
to mechanical work — hired them out in such manner that they 
threw nineteen free mechanics out of employment — and on the 
proceeds of the labor of these nineteen slaves, amounting to 
$5,T00 per annuui, he was taxed not a single^cent ! 

" There are many poor men in this State," said Mr. 
Pierpoint in 1860, " getting 75, 80, 90, and 100 cents per day, 
with iamilies to support, who all have to pay, in addition to the 
income tax, for everything they own on the face of the earth, 
forty cents on a hundred dollars, while the slaveholder only 
pays 10 cents on the hundred dollars' worth of slaves ! " " The 
income tax levied by the slaveholders upon the small iucomes 
of free mechanics," Mr. Pierpoint said, " will eat out the 
very vitals of all the manufacturing energy of the State." 
]^or were the free mechanics the only suiferers. " The farmer 
in Western Virginia (not a slaveholder) who 12 years ago paid 
his tax with 15 dollars, now pays $60, with little increase in 
actual vahie." Only the slaveholders were exempted! 

Thus was slave labor encouraged and free labor made penal 
in the South. Thus, to use Marion's words, the poor became 
poorer and the rich richer. Thus free mechanics were driven 
out of the slave states, taxed out, starved out, until, in 1859, 
Charleston, one of the chief seaports of the South, had not left 
so much as a single ship-carpenter. Thus was brought about 
the unhappy condition of the free workingmen, described by 
Mr. Tarver, in " DeBow's Industrial Resources of the South and 
Southwest." 

" The acquisition of a respectable position in the scale of 
wealth appears so difficult that thej' decline the hopeless pursuit, 
and many of them settle down into passive idleness, and become 
the almost passive subjects of all its consequences. An evident 
deterioration is taking place in this part of the population ; the 
younger portion of it being less educated, less industrious, and 
in every point of view less respectable than their ancestors." 



HOW SLAVES OUT-VOTE FREE WORKINGMEN. 17 

HOW SLAVES OUT-VOTE FREE WORKINGMEN. 

These are tlie effects of the slave labor system upon the 
unfortunate free laborers who are subject to its influence. Bear 
in mind that it is not only in Virginia that the free mechanic 
and laborer is thus wronged, In Louisiana, in South Carolina, 
in most ot the slave states, slave property is represented and 
favored in some special manner. In Louisiana the representa^ 
tion, under the old system, was apportioned according to the 
whole population — free and slave. Thereby it happened that 
the thousands of free laborers of Xew Orleans were placed at 
the mercy of a few enormously wealthy slave-owning capitalists 
in the sparsely settled river parishes ; and a thousand votes of 
free mechanics had not so much power in the Legislature as two 
hundred and fifty jilanters' votes, whose slaves filled ujp a legis- 
lative district. 

South Carolina has always been called the model slave state. 
Her system was and is the admiration of the slaveholding class. 
There the free laborer was entirely debarred from influence, 
totally unrepresented. He could v^ote — but not for one of his 
own class ; only a slave oioner could sei've in the Legislature y 
only a slave oioner could he governor y and the Legislature, com- 
posed exclusively of slave owners, appointed the judges, the 
magistrates, the senators, the electors for President. 

Xot only this — the Legislature set apart the state CongreS' 
clonal districts ; and it managed this in such manner that the 
slaveholding interest was alone represented in Congress. The 
lower part of the State, where the slaves were most dense, sent 
four out of the seven representatives to Congress. In the legis- 
lative apportionment the free workingmen of the State were still 
more outraged. Five-sixths of the white population, residing in 
those counties where there were but few slaves, had only seventy- 
eight out of one hundred and twenty-two representatives in the 
Legislature — a little more than one-half. The Pendleton district, 
with over twenty- six thousand white inhabitants, but few slaves, 
sent but seven members ; the parishes of St. Philip and St. 
Michael, with less than nineteen thousand whites, but a heavy 
slave population, sent eighteen. 

Now take notice of the results of this system upon the free 
3 



18 JIONV SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WORKIXGMAN. 

workinginen. Governor Seabrook, of South Carolina, said, in a 
message a few years ago : 

" Education lias been provided by the Legislature hut for one 
class of the citizens of the State, which is the icealthy class. For 
the middle and poorer classes of society it has done nothing, 
since no organized system has been adopted for that purpose. 
'^ "" '^ '"■ '^ Ten years ago twenty thousand adults, besides 
children, were unable to read or write, in South Carolina. Has 
our free school system dispelled any of this ignorance? Are 
there not reasonable fears to be entertained that the number has 
increased since that period i " 

In the Charleston Standard, in Xo\'ember, 1855, was advanced 
by eminent South Carolinians the atrocious doctrine that the 
State should educate only its capitalists and the officers and 
overseers wlio, under the order of the capitalists, should com- 
mand and direct the laborers. Chaiwellor Harper, one of the 
foremost men of the State, said, in a public address printed by 
De Bow, and received with general approval : 

'" AVould you do a benetit to the horse, or the ox, by giving 
him a cultivated understanding or tine feelings ? So far as the 
mere laborer has the pride, the l^nowledge, and the aspiration of 
a free man, he is unfitted for his situation, and must doubly feel 
its infelicity.'' 

And what was the eifect of this system upon the free work- 
ingnien of the State? Let Governor Hammond, one of its chief 
citizens, reply. Fifty thousand, he said, a sixth of the white 
population of the State, icere imahle to earn their living. He 
added : " Most of them now follow agricultural pursuits, in 
feeble but injurious conijpetition untli slave labor^ And another 
writer, Avhose essay on cotton and cotton manufactures at the 
South is printed by De Bow, remarks that " a degree and extent 
of poverty and destitution exist in the Southern States among a 
certain class of people, almost unknown in the manufacturing 
districts of the Kortli. " '" * Boys and girls by thousands, 
destitute both of emplo3Mnent and the means of education, grow 
up to ignorance and poverty, and too many of them to vice and 
crime." 

Such are some — but not all — the disabilities imder which the 



zrs- 



FEEE WORKINGMEN FLY FROM THE SLAVE STATES. 19 

free workingman labors, in a State where the slave-labor system 
prevails. Deprived of employment, left without education, 
misrepresented in the legislative halls by men whose interests 
are opposed to his, and before whom he is powerless, the free 
laborer grows poorer as his wealthy neighbor grows richer ; and 
looking at these things we cease to Avonder at the persistent emi- 
gration from the eastern slave states, westward, of which Mr, 
Tarver said, speaking of South Carolina, " That necessity must 
be strong and urgent wliicli induces thirty per cent, of the pop n- 
lotion of a State, in the short space of ten years, to hreah all the 
social and individual ties ichich bind man to the place of his 
hirth, and seek their fortunes in other lands?^ 

FREE WORKIXGMEN FLY FROM THE SLAVE SJATKS. 

The slave states are the most sparsely populated of the Fnion : 
their soil is rich, their climate kindly, they abound in mineral 
wealth ; everything there favors the workingman — yet the work- 
ingmen of the free states refuse to go there ; and a co/ista?it 
and large stream of emigration has set for years, from the slave 
states into the free states. The free workingmen of the slave 
states have fled from the oppression and l)light of the slave in- 
stitution, to the part of the Union where all labor is free and 
paid. 

If we take tlie census report of 1S50, we And that the slave 
states had sent nearly six times as many of their population int<j 
free territory as the free states had sent into slave territory. We 
And that Kentucky had sent on to free soil sixty thousand more 
persons than all the free states had sent into slave soil. Little 
Maryland had sent more than half as many persons into free 
territory as all the slave states had sent into slave territory. 
Virginia had sent sixty thousand more persons into free territory 
than all the free states had sent upon the slave soil. Kentucky 
and Tennessee were but little behind the other states Ave have 
mentioned. 

This shows the course of emigration. But it is even more 
clearly shoAvn in some interesting tables contained in the 
last census report — that for 18G0, In a table of " Internal Mi- 
gration" we And that there were in the country, and returned 



20 HOW SLAVERY ESfJIJRES THE FREE WORKINGMAN. 

by the census-takers, 399,700 persons born in Virginia, but liv- 
ing in other states ; 34'±,765 persons born in Tennessee, but 
living in other states; 272,606 persons born in ISIorth Carolina, 
but living in other states ; 137,258 persons born in Maryland, 
but living in other states ; 32,493 persons born in Delaware, but 
living in other states ; 331,904 persons born in Kentucky, but 
living in other states. 

Now it is true that not all these 1,518,726 persons who 
had migrated from only the border line of slave states were 
living in the free states, but by far the greater number were- 
The " course of internal migration" is exhibited in a table of the 
Census Keport. There we find that emigrants from Virginia 
have removed " chiefly" to Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky, and Indi- 
ana; from Kentucky they have removed chiefly to Missouri, 
Indiana, Illinois and Ohio. From Maryland they have removed 
chiefly to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of 
Columbia. From Delaware they have migrated chiefly to Penn- 
sylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Indiana. From Tennessee they 
have removed chiefly to Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and Illinois. 

But this table shows us a far more remarkable fact. From 
the southern tier of slave states the migration was chiefly into 
other slave states, in a western or northwestern direction 
towards the free states. From the border slave states the migra- 
tion was chiefly into the free states, and into that slave state 
(Missouri) which promised first to become free. But from the 
free states, which sent forth also a large stream of emigrants, 
there was no emigration to slave states ; all, with insignificant 
exceptions, removed to other free states. 399,700 Virginians 
had removed chiefly to Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana ; 
but of 582,512 Pennsylvanians, just across the line, it is re- 
corded that they removed " chiefly" to Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, 
and Iowa. 331,904 Kentuckians had removed " chiefly" to Mis- 
souri, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio; but 593,043 persons born 
across the river, in free Ohio, had removed chiefly to Indiana, 
Illinois, Iowa and Missouri. These contrasts hold good of the 
whole table. From no free state has there been emigration to 
the slave states ; but from every border slave state there has 
been a very heavy migration to the free states. 

ObservCi that this course of migration is unusual and imnatural. 



^^^ 



SLAYEEf EXTERMINATES FfeEE MECHANICS. 2l 

The tendency, in all tlie liistoiy of the world, has been the other 
way. Tribes and families have fled from the bleak climate and 
barren soil of the iS'orth to the milder climate and more generous 
soil of the South. A French writer, the Count de Segur, says : 
"The human race does not march in that direction; it turns its 
back to the ^ortli ; the sun attracts its regards, its desires, and 
its steps. It is no easy matter to arrest this great current." 
In other countries all emigration has turned to the Southward, 
by an instinctive movement ; but with us the horror of slavery^ 
the aversion of the free laborer to come in contact and competi- 
tion with slave labor, has sufficed to conquer even this strong 
instinctive tendency. 

Bear in mind, too, that the South has lost, by tin? migration, 
the best class of her citizens. The indolent masters remained ; the 
slaves remained ; those free whites who were too poor and helpless 
and ignorant either to desire or to be able to remove, remained ; 
but there has been a constant drain of the yeomanry of the border 
slave states — the forehanded farmers and industrious mechanics^ 
the class whom a state can least afford to lose. These men and 
their families have helped to fill our northwestern territories and 
states ; and have taken the places of the thousands who removed 
from tlie border free states to the northwest. They have faced 
unwonted winters and harder conditions of life — why ? Because 
them free worlcingmeii felt slavery to he a curse, a har to all 
their efforts. They were not abolitionists— they brought into 
the free states with them their curious hatred of the negro, as 
though it was the slave and not the master who was their 
oppressor. 

Slavery exterminates free mechanics, 

Charles J. Faulkner, of Virginia, said, in 1832, in the legisla- 
ture of that state: ""Slavery hanishes free lohitelahor' it ex- 
terminates the mechanic, the artisan, the manufacturer, it deprives 
them of hreadr And C. C. Clay, of Alabama, not less eminent 
in the South than Mr. Faulkner, said a few years ago : " Our 
wealthier planters, with greater means and no more skill, are 
buying out their poorer neighbors, extending their jDlantations 
and adding to their force. The wealthy few, who are able to 



22 HOW SLAVERY INJUEES THE FEEE WOEKINGMAN. 

live on smaller profits, and to give tlieir blasted fields some rest, 
are thus pushing oif the many who are merely independent. 
Thus the white 2yopulation has decreased, and the slave increased, 
almost j!>a;v" ^j>«5'^w in several counties of our state. In 1825 
Madison county cast about three thousand votes ; now she can- 
not cast more than two thousand three hundred. In travelling 
that country one will discover numerous farm-houses, once the 
abode of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied hy 
slaves, or tenantless, deserted, and dilapidated. He will see the 
moss growing on the mouldering walls of once thrifty villages, 
and will find ' one only master grasps the whole domain,' that 
once furnished happy homes for a dozen white families." 

Thus southern men, themselves slaveholders, bear witness to 
the causes which lead to the great and constant migration of the 
most vpJuable class of citizens from the slave to the free states. 
The agriculturist and the meclianic alike, the blacksmith, tiie 
carpenter, the farmer, all are " pushed off," to use the expressive 
phrase of Mr. Clay, to make way for the masters and their slaves. 

SLAVERY SnrxS THE SOUTH AGAINST GERMANS AND IRISHMEN^. 

If a considerable part of the white workingm en of the slave 
states have migrated to the free states, it is equally true that of 
the thousands of German, Irish and other workingmen who 
have, with their families, sought our shores, the southern states 
have received but an insignificant fraction. 

To the industry and thrift of this part of our population a large 
share of our prosperity and wealth is owing ; without tlie help 
of their strong arms, the free states, though thriving and populous, 
and receiving increase from the South, must have advanced much 
more slowly than they liave. This fact has been generally re- 
cognized amongst us. Indeed, m the western states special 
inducements have been held out to immigrants, so strongly have 
the people there felt the need of their labor and the advantage 
of their presence. Consider, then, what has been the loss of the 
South, which has utterly failed to attract this class, while at the 
same time it was drained to a considerable extent of its own free 
working class. 

If we compare free states with slave states, we find that while 



BJLAVEEY SHUTS OUT Gi;EMANS AND lEISHMEN. 23 

South Carolina had in 1860 but 9,986 foreign born citizens. 
Massachusetts had 260,114 ; Virginia had but 35,058 foreigners, 
but Pennsyslania, her neighbor, had 430,505 ; Georgia, the em- 
pire state of the South, had but 11,671, but Kew York had 
998,640 ; Mississippi had only 8,558, but Illinois had 324,643, 
Tennessee had 21,226, and Kentucky 59,T99 ; but Ohio had 
328,254, and Indiana 118,184. Little Ehode Island, with an 
insignificant territory and a dense population of 133 to the 
square mile, had attracted 37,394 foreign emigrants ; but jSTorth 
Carolina, with a milder and more varied climate, a fertile soil, 
ready access by sea, and the advantage of a profitable fishery and 
several other special pursuits, not to speak of an immensely 
greater territory, liad been able to attract to her borders but 
3,299 foreign emigrants. 

N'or must we fail to notice that in tliose states where slavery 
languished or had but a slender hold, emigrants at once increased 
in numbers. Maryland had 77,536, nearly seven times as many 
as Georgia ; Delaware had 9,165, nearly three times as many as 
Korth Carolina; and Missouri had 160,541, as many within fif- 
teen thousand as all the slave states east of the Mississippi, ex- 
cept Maryland and Delaware. That is to say, Missouri, which 
was in the popular balief certain to become a free state before 
many years, was able to attract to her soil nearly as many emi- 
grants as Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, 
North and South Carolina and Virginia together ! Still, slavery 
told against Missouri when compared with the free states. With 
a milder climate, immensely greater mineral resources and a 
nearer and cheaper access to great markets, Missouri had attracted 
but 13.59 per cent, of foreigners, while Iowa had 15.71 per 
cent., Minnesota 33.78 per cent., and Wisconsin 35.69 per cent. 

The census report shows that of the foreign born population 
the free states have received over eighty-six and one-half per 
cent., and the slave states less than fourteen. It shows the 
States which have received the smallest percentage of this accre- 
tion to be North Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, and 
South Carolina — all slave states. And it shows also the singu- 
lar fact, that while eight foreign emigrants have settled in the 
free states to one in the slave states, the number of slaves — if 
we add the insignificant number of free colored — gives just one 
to every eight of our population. 



24 now SLAYEEY INJURES THE FEEE WOEKINGMAN. 

FKEE WORKINGMEN KEPT OUT OF THE FINEST PART OF THE UNION. 

Is it no matter to workingmen that they are thus driven out 
anclhej)t out of the largest, most fertile, and jpleasantest jpart of 
the Union by the slave-labor system, wliieli there robs them of 
work, and attacks tlieir rights % In the mild climate of the bor- 
der slave states, the seasons are longer, the productions more 
varied ; trades which can be pursued in the lN"orth during only 
eight or nine months, may be carried on there all the year 
round ; food is or ought to be cheaper ; the workingman and 
his family need fewer and less costly clothes ; in many ways 
the conditions of life are easier, for the mechanic and laborer 
as well as the farmer, than in the colder Xorth. But that 
great region the, slavemasters closed against the free loorhing 
men, and preserved for themselves and their slaves. 

The climate is not too hot in any of those states for white 
men and women to labor in the fields. Governor Hammond, 
of South Carolina, said : " The steady heat of our summers is 
not so prostrating as the short but sudden and frequent heats 
of northern summers.'' White men work on the levee in 
JSTew Orleans in midsummer, and have the severest labor put 
upon them at that. He who writes this has rolled cotton 
and sugar upon tlie levee of Xew Orl^eans in the month of 
July, and screwed cotton in Mobile Bay in August. Dr. Cart- 
wright, the great apostle of slavery, rightly remarked : " Here 
in New Orleans the large part of the drudgery — loorli, requir- 
ing exposure to the sun, as railroad snaking, street paving, 
dray driving, ditching, and huilding is performed hj white 
peopled This severe labor was put upon the free white working- 
men ; the slave-owners reserved the light tasks for their slaves. 

In Alabama, by the census of 1850, sixty-seven thousand, in 
Mississippi, fifty-five thousand, in Texas forty-seven thousand 
white men, non-slaveholders, labored in the fields, and took no 
hurt. Cotton was cultivated in Texas, before the war, with 
perfect success, by white men ; the Germans managed even to 
raise more pounds to the acre, pick it cleaner, and to get a 
higher price for it, than the neighboring planters. Olmsted 
mentions an American in Texas who would not employ slave 
labor, and who, with white men as his help, " produced more 
bales to the hand than any planter around him." 



^f^ 



THE SOUTHEEN CLIMATE HEALTHFUL. 



^5 



Tlie mortality reports ot the census show that the southern 
states are not peculiarly unhealthful. In Alabama, the deaths, 
per cent., were less than in Connecticut ; in Georgia they are 
1.23 per cent., in 'New York, 1.22 ; in South Carolina they are 
1.44 percent., in Massachusetts, 1.Y6, which is precisely the 
same as in Louisiana, notoriously, till General Butler cleaned 
Kew Orleans and drove out the yellow fever, the most sickly 
state in the South. 

Nothing^ therefore^ has heyt free loorkingmen out of thete 
states — nearer to the great markets of tlie vjorld^ having more 
dbunclant mineral luealth, and in every way more favorably sit- 
uated than the cold Northeast and the far away Northwest — 
except the fatal competition of the slaveowners. To avoid that, 
millions of workingmen, native and foreign born, have removed 
to the nortlnvest, until at last the tide of emigration has even 
trenched upon the inhospitable desert, aud has spread beyond 
the extreme limits of arable land, and faf beyond the profitable 
reach of markets. The Xorthwestern farmer has burned his 
corn because he could not afford to send it to the distant sea- 
board— ?i'«<s it no loss to him that slavery kept him out of the 
fertile fields of Virginia and North Carolina ? 

Even had slavery remained in full vigor, the time had come 
when free labor, seeking new outlets and greater opportunities, 
would have pressed hardly upon it. If slavery is swept away, 
free workingmen will hereafter have opportunity in the South, 
and to all that great region a boundless future of wealth and 
prosperity opens up. The abandoned farms, the mouldering 
villages, the empty cottages, will once more be filled with the 
busy and cheerful hum of the labor of freemen. 

Their cunning will repair the waste of unskillful slave 
labor; their ingenious toil will redeem the barren fields of Vir- 
ginia and other southern states. The tide of emigration, sweep- 
ing in that direction, may repeat in the South the marvellous 
results which it has accomplished during the last twenty-five 
years in the J^orthwest ; Virginia will be another Minnesota, 
iSTorth Carolina a new Iowa, and in Tennessee will be repeated 
the story of Ohio* 



26 now SLAVERY INJUEES THE FEEE WOEKINGMAN* 



HOW TO LESSEN THE BUKDEN OF TAXATION. 

When a man falls into debt, and is anxions to free himself of 
it, what does he do ? He works harder, and lives more frngallj, 
He tries to make a dollar more per week, and to live on a dollar 
less. In that way he may hope to get clear of debt. Well, as 
with a man, so it is with a nation : we have incnrred a great 
debt ; and henceforth, we must, as a people, live more econo- 
mically, and nse, to better advantage, our property and onr 
strength. We can no longer aiFord to exhanst our soil, by " art- 
less " methods of culture ; we can no longer afford to employ 
half a dozen men to do one man's work ; we can no longer 
afford to use poor tools, to do with a hoe the work of a plough, 
to reap by hand instead of by steamj to work by main strength 
and stupiduess, instead of intelligently. 

It is not enough that one part of the country shall do its best— 
the resources of all parts must be fully developed. It is not fair 
to the working men of the free states, that they shall pay heavier 
taxes, in order that slaveholders may indulge their fancy for 
dull, plodding, unskilled slave labor. It is not fair that we of 
the l^ortli should bear a heavy burden, more than our proper 
share of the connnon debt, when, by the nse of proper means, 
by throwing tlie Southern states open to free labor, and to 
skilled labor, its resources can be rapidly developed to the point 
where those states will be as populous, and as wealthy, as the 
free states. 

If we can discover a way to make the whole country popu- 
lous, and to make the whole nation prosperons, the weight of 
taxation will be much lightened ; increased numbers and in- 
creased wealth will enable us to bear, without suffering, burdens 
under which we might sink if these elements of strength were 
lacking. 

WE CANNOT AFFORD SLAVERY. 

We cannot afford to omit measures which will add to oul' 
ability to pay taxes. There was a time when we might live 
after a slipshod fashion, but hereafter it is important to every 
man in the country, and. esj)ecially to the workingmen and their 
families, that the natural resources of the whole country shall be 



SLAVERY A COSTLY ELUNDEE, 37 

wisely and effectively developed. It is easy to show that the 
Southern states have enormous and inexhaustible wealth of iron, 
coal, copper, and many other things ; but if that mineral wealth 
is to remain, in future as in the past, in the bowels of the earth ; 
if Yirginia, with the richest coal and iron deposits, is hereafter, 
as heretofore, to buy both coal and iron in Pennsylvania ; if 
Tennessee, abounding in minerals, is to continue to be cursed 
with a slave-labor system, w^hich forbids the development of 
her greatest sources of wealth ; if we do not use the only means 
in our power, or any one's power, to bring out that wealth, and 
thus add enormously to the general wealth of the country— 
which can only be done by extirpating slave-labor, and substitute 
ing free labor in its place— why then, we may as well reconcile 
ourselves — we free working men of the IN'orth— to paying per= 
petually much the heaviest share of the national taxation. 

A shrewd foreign traveller once remarked that the slave- 
labor system was such a costly economical blunder, that no 
European nation could afford it ; only a country having no debt, 
and scarcely any expenses, could indulge in it. The time has 
come when we, too, can no longer afford it. If the working 
men of tliefree states wish to lift from their lacjcs some portion 
of the heavy hurden of taxation, theij must insist that the south- 
ern states shall ha throion open to free lalor, in order that this 
vast region shall be enabled to yield an equal share of the na- 
tional revenue. It cannot do this till it is equally wealthy ; but 
as we shall proceed to show, the slave labor system has made it 
poorer instead of richer, for many years. 

How are we to equalize the burden ? By makino- Viro-inia 
as populous and wealthy as Pennsylvania, Kentucky as Ohio, 
Tennessee and Georgia as ISTew York, South Carolina as Massa- 
chusetts, Mississippi as Iowa. The Lynchburg Virginian wrote 
some years ago : 

" The coal fields of Virginia are the most extensive in the 
world ; and the coal is of the best and purest quality ; her iron 
deposits are altogether inexhaustible, and in many instances so 
pure that it is malleable in its primitive state ; and many of 
these deposits are in the vicinity of extensive coal fields. ' She 
has, too, very extensive deposits of copper, lead, and gypsum. 
Her rivers are numerous and bold, generally with fall enough 
for extensive water power." 



28 HOW SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WORKINGIVIAN. 



VIROmrA AND PENNSYLVANIA COMPARED. 

But these coal and iron and copper and lead deposits of Vir- 
ginia, greater tlian those of Pennsylvania, and lying in a liner 
climate, are almost untouched. And because they are so, the 
whole industry of the state has suftered. The census of 1850 
o-ave the following values to agricultural lands in the adjoining 
States of Pennsylvania and Virginia : 

In Virginia. In Penu'a, 

Number of acres of improved land in farms 10,380,135 8,626,619 

Number unimproved 15,792,176 6,294,728 

Casli value of farms in Virginia, elgJd dollars ; in Pennsylvania, tivenli/-five 
dolla.s per acre. 

Does any one need to be told which state is able to pay and 
will pay the largest amount of revenue to the government 'i Is 
it not easy to see that, with the same policy in Virginia which 
lias prevailed in Pennsylvania, that state would in a very few 
years be as populous, as wealth}", and as great a source of I'eve- 
nue, as her neighbor ? And is it not to tlie interest of every 
free workingman, every tax-payer, that tliis should be brought 
about ? 

The Southern states, if we include Missouri and Kentucky, 
have an area of 851,508 square miles ; the free states have an 
area of only 612,597 square miles. The South ]ias a milder 
climate, shorter winters, a fer more fertile soil, immensely 
p-reater mineral wealth, more abundant natural water communi- 
cations with the sea, than the Xorth. Yet in 1850, by the 
census, the total value of the real and personal property of the 
free states was $1,101,081,000 (jreater than that of the real and 
personal property of the South, including three millions of 
slaves. But in 1860, according to the census of that year, the 
total value of real and personal property in the free states was 
$2,657,165,268 greatep than that of the South. The wealth of 
the free states, excluding the territories, was in 1860, in round 
lunnbers, nine thousand two hundred and eighty-seven millions ; 
that of the slave states, including Missouri, six thousand six 
hundred and thirty millions, also including the slaves ! 

Now if, by wise measures, by encouraging the mechanic arts, 
fostering free schools, developing mineral resources, and, in 



'^NO COMMERCE, NO MINING, NO MANUFACTURES." 29 

short, treating the South as we treated the ^Northwest, we can 
make it increase as rapidly, after the war, in free popnhation, 
and in wealtli, as tlie Northwest has, we may expect this differ- 
ence to disappear in a very few years ; we may expect tlie South 
to become as prosperous and as wealthy, in a few years, as the 
North is. In that case it will contribute a revenue to the gov- 
ernment greater than the whole Worth does at this time. That 
is to say, loe can double our revenue luithout increasing our 
taxation, or we can raise the same revenue ivith half the taxes. 

But to do that we must do away with the wasteful and ruinous 
system of slave-labor which has made sterile the lands of the 
South, driven out her mechanics and artisans, made poor her 
people, and decreased her wealth. We cannot afford to waste 
anything ; but Olmsted wrote to a Texan friend as the fruit of 
" a large class of observations :" 

'' The natural elements of wealth in the soil of Texas will 
have been more exhausted in ten years, and with them the re- 
wards offered by Providence to labor Avill have been more 
lessened than without slavery Avonld have been the case in two 
hundred. After two hundred years' occupation of similar soils 
by a free laboring community, 1 have seen no such evidence of 
exhaustion as in Texas I have after ten years of slavery," 

TESTIMONY OF SLAVEHOLDERS. 

In 1^59 Charleston had not a single ship-carpenter. In 1859 
Governor Wise, of \^irginia, said to his people : 

" Commerc-e has long ago spread her sails, and sailed away 
from you. You have not, as yet, dug more coal than enough 
to warm yourselves at your own hearths ; you have set no tilt- 
hanmier of Yulcan to strike blows worthy of gods in your own 
iron foundries ; you have not yet spun more that coarse cotton 
enough, in the way of manufacture, to clothe your own slaves. 
You have no commerce, no mining, no mauufaciures. You 
have relied alone on the single power of agriculture, and such 
agriculture ! Your sedge-patches outshine the sun. Your 
inattention to your only source of wealth has seared the very 
bosom of mother earth. Instead of having to feed cattle on 
a thousand hills, you have had to chase the stump-tailed deer 
through the sedge-patches to procure a tough beefsteak. The 
present condition of things has existed too'long in Virginia." 



30 HOW SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WORKIXGMAN. 

Thomas Marsliall, anotlier slaveliolcler, said ; 

" Slavery is ruinous to the Avhites ; it retards improvement, 
roots out an industrious population^ lanishes the yeomanry of 
the country ; deprives the spinner^ the weaver, the smith., the 
shoernaher, the carpenter^ of employment and support^ 

In little more than ten years Wisconsin lands became worth 
on an average nine dollars and fifty -four cents per acre ; bnt 
after two hundred and fifty years those of Virginia, with all her 
natural advantages, were worth but eight dollars and twenty- 
seven cents per acre. Virginia, fi*ee, might have had as rapid 
an increase as Massachusetts ; she would have had in 1850, that 
is to say, a population of 7,751,324: whites, instead of 894,800. 
Consider what would have been her wealth, with such an 
enormous population. Consider what would have been her 
ability, with her minerals, her water-power, her grain fields and 
her seacoast, to contribute to the national revenue. 

If we want to lighten the burden of taxation, we must give 
the South the same opportunity for growth and increase which 
has made the West and ^Northwest so populous and rich in the 
last twenty-five years. But to do that, we must encourage free 
labor there — for it is the free workingman who makes the land 
Pich — and the free man will not and cannot toil in competition 
with the slave. 

THE WASTEFUI-NESS OF SLAVE LABOR. 

The slave-labor system exhausts the soil, wastes its products, 
and contirbutes less— a very great deal less — to the national 
wealth, than the more skilful and intelligent free labor. The 
slave workman cannot be trusted with machinery ; he cannot 
be trusted with the best tools ; he must have— so the slave- 
holders themselves have said — the coarsest, rudest tools ; any- 
thiuf*- else he breaks. Now every workingman knows that 
with heavy, rough tools he cannot accomplish as much as an- 
other man can with light, well-made, handy tools. Every 
working man knows that it makes a world of diflerence what 
sort of a plough, what sort of an axe, what sort of a plane, Avhat 
sort of a hammer he uses. He wants the best ; he knows that 
it pays him to have the best ; and he knows, too, that if he can 



WASTEFULNESS OF SLAVE LABOR. 



31 



make a machine saw, or plane, or mortice, or do anything 
else for liim, that is so mnch gained — so mnch more money 
made in a given time. But the slave laborer cannot be trusted 
with any of these helps. Is it a wonder that with a system 
v^hich thus prevents the use of the hest tools and inachinery, the 
South is poor ? 

It is a fact, proved by the census, that lalor in Massachusetts 
is four times as 2JroduGtive as in South Carolina. The average 
value of the product per head of the cotton factories of Massa- 
chusetts was in 1855, $725— ten times greater than the average 
value of the products of labor in South Carolina. The State of 
Massachusetts, with the help of skilled and industrious free 
labor, sent annually into the commerce of the world, values 
great' r than that of the entire cotton crop of the South ! Such 
U the enormous difference between slave labor and free labor. 

Mr. Guthrie, in his report on the finances, in 1854-5, pre- 
pared a table from the census report, showing the average value 
of products per head in the different States. A comparison of 
B^me of the Free States with some of the Slave States, will 
show how much more productive is free labor than slave labor. 
Ill Massachusetts, with a bleak climate and a sterile soil, the 
average product per head of the population is valued at $1G6 60 ; 
in South Carolina but 856 91 ; in iS''ew York, $111 91.; in 
(ieorgia, the Empire State of the South, $61 15 ; in Pennsyl- 
vania", $99 30 ; in A^irginia, $59 12 ; in Ohio, $75 82 ; in Ar- 
kansas, $52 01 ; and in ITorth Carolina, $19 38. 

SLAVERY LOWERS THE VALUE OF LAND. 

But this is not all ; slave labor not only produces far less, and 
thus adds less to the taxable wealth of the community ; it at 
tlie sauie time wastes and ruins the substance of the country. It 
ruins the soil. The cotton planters were continually removing 
westward, with their slaves, to new lands; and Olinstead reports 
that in Texas even, recently settled as it is, he already found the 
two curses of the planter— worn out and abandoned plantations 
and " poor whites.'' In Isoxth. Carolina, six bushels of wheat to the 
acre is counted a fair crop. Compare Virginia and [Pennsyl- 
vania, and we find, by the census report, that the actual crops 



32 now SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WORKINGMAN. 

per acre of corn were, in Virginia eightee^i, and in Pennsyl- 
va7iia thirty-six busliels ; of tobacco, in Yirginia — whose speci- 
ality is tobacco — 630 ponnds per acre, in Pennsylvania 730 
pounds. Under tlie slave-labor system of the Sontli, according 
to Mr. Greojcr an accredited writer on the sonthern side, South 
Carolina had, before the war, one hundred and twenty-five thou- 
sand white persons " who ought to work and who do not, or 
who are so employed as to be wholly unproductive to the State." 
Does anyone imagine that it is not the slave system, but tlie 
climate, which is to blame for this enormous and ruinous waste 
of labor and of the natural resources of the South ? In Virginia, 
wherever, before the war, free labor got the upper hand, and 
slavery was driven out, there productions were at once largely 
increased. The Charleston Standard remarked, in 1857, " The 
Virginia journalists have frecpently borne witness to the fact, 
that in many districts where large estates have been divided and 
sold to small farmers, the land is turning off from three to six 
times as much produce as it did a few years ago." In Cahill, 
Mason, Brooke, and Tyler counties, Virginia, which had, before 
the war, a free laboring population, witli slaves but one in fif- 
teen to the freemen, but no advantages of towns in or near 
them, land was worth, in 1855, $7 75 per acre. In Soutliamp- 
ton, Surrey, James Town, and ;N"ew Kent counties, in the same 
state, where the slave population was as 1 to 2, the landioas 
worth hut half as much, $4 50 per acre. In Fairfax county the 
slave population was much reduced within tlie last twenty five 
years ; free laboring men took the places of the slave laborers ; 
and the County Commissioners reported officially : 

" In appearance, the county is so changed, in many parts, that 
a traveller, who passed over it ten years ago, would not now 
recognize it. Thonsands and thousands of acres had been culti- 
vated in Tobacco, by the former proprietors, would not pay the 
cost, and were abandoned as worthless, and became covered with 
a wilderness of pines. These lands have been purchased by 
northern emigrants ; the large tracts divided and suljdivided, 
and cleared of pines ; and neat farm-houses and barns, with 
smiling fields of grain and grass, in the season, salute the de- 
lighted gaze of the beholder. Ten years ago, it was a mooted 
question whether Fairfax lands could be made productive ; and, 
if BO, would they pay the cost % This problem has been satisfac- 



//^^ 



SLAVERY IMPOVEEISHES THE LAIST). 



33 



torily solved by many, and, in consequence of the above altered 
state of things, school-houses and churches ha^ve donhled in mm- 
her:' 

That is to say, slavery makes a rich country x^oor, free labor 
makes a poor countr}^ rich ; slave labor — improvident, wasteful, 
unskillful — rots out the heart of the land, and, finally, leaves the 
soil when it can no longer make a living from it : free labor 
comes in, and, in ten years, restores the soil, and works it at so 
great a profit that the face of the country is changed, and 
" churches and schools are doubled." But marh I until slave 
lalor is driven out, free Uibor will not come in. The two sys? 
tems cannot work together. Which, then, shall we protect — 
the slavemaster, who impoverishes the country, or the free 
laborer who enriches it ? 

The Wheeling Intelligencer^ then published in a slave state, 
spoke out on this question, some ten years ago, in the following 
words : 

" The present great and pressing want of our state, like that 
of the whole United States, is cultivation and improvement, not 
enlargement and annexation, and the obvious and the only mode 
of a rapid growth of our state or city is such a change of public 
policy as shall invite to om' aid and co operation our Caucasian 
cousins, the intelligent, moral, and industrious artizans, mechan- 
ics, miners, manufacturers, and commercial men of Europe and 
the northern states, to share our taxation, develop our resources, 
and make ours a white man's country, with all the energy, edu- 
cation love of order, of freedom, and of order characteristic of 
the Ano-lo-Saxon race. The history of the world, and especially 
of the States of this Union, shows most conclusively i\\^t puUio 
prosperity hears an almost mathematical proportion to the degree 
of freedom enjoyed hy all the inhabitants of the state. Men 
will always work better for the cash than for the lash. The free 
laborer will produce and save as much, and consume and waste 
as little as he can. The slave, on the contrary, will produceand 
save as little, and consume and waste as much as possible. 
Hence states and counties filled with the former class must 
necessarily flourish and increase in population, arts, manufac- 
tures, wealth, and education, because they are animated and in- 
cited by all the vigor of the will ; while states filled with the 
latter class must exhibit comparative stagnation, because it is the 
universal law of nature that force and fear end in rum and 
decay." 

5 



34 HOW SLAVERY INJURES THE FREE WORKINGSLAN. 



EFFECTS OF FREE AND t^LAVE LABOR CONTRASTED, 

In the newlj settled free states M-e find villages, towns, clnirches, 
scliools, and other conveniences of civilization springing up in 
tlie immediate track of the settlers ; in the slave states, on the 
contrarv, these are to a great extent lacking. The free work- 
ingman of Iowa, or Minnesota, may count upon being able to 
send his children to good schools, to attend clmrch with his 
family, to enjoy the profits of a sale in an adjacent village for 
all the '' small truck" of his farm, if he is a farmer ; or if he is 
a mechanic, to obtain employment, through the gathering of the 
population in villages and towns, to aflbrd him a comfortable 
living. In the slave states, on the contrary-, even in the oldest 
settled of them, towns and villages are few and far apart ; the 
small farmer can find no sale for his chickens, eggs, vegeta- 
bles or fruits ; the free mechanic is restricted to the few cities 
where alone he can find employment ; all inducements to any 
methods of mechanical labor, or of farming, not practised in 
cities or upon great slave plantations, are lacking. 

So few are the towns, even in the long settled states of Georgia 
and South Carolina, that a large part of the railroad stations 
are numbered — as station .1 , station 2, station l-I ; and where, as 
at Millen, and other points, a name is given, there is, in most 
cases, no town or village, but only a depot for cotton. 

SLAVERY LEA\-ES NO CHANCE FOR SMALL FARMERS. 

Of course, in such a country, with such a state of aftairs, 
the small farmer, and the country carpenter, blacksmith, 
wheelwright, &c., have no chance to live. The small farmer, 
with us in the free states, carries his chickens, eggs, feathers, 
turkeys, pigs, apples, and other minor produce to the " store," 
in the next village, and with this produce often clothes his fam- 
ily, and keeps np the supply of tea, coffee and sugar, while the 
staple of his farm, his grain or cattle, go to pay the cost of labor, 
and other expenses, and to form the balance of profit, which 
laid by, makes him yearly a more comfortable and inde2:)endent 
man. But in the slave states this small farmer is surrounded 
by great plantations ; no town or village is near him where ho 



SLAVERY GIVES NO CHANCE TO SMALL FAEMERS. 35 

can sell the profitable " small truck ;" he must neglect this 
important source of profit for the man of few acres ; he toils 
away in the cotton field, and Us wife toils with him ; and they 
are no better off at the year's end than at the beginning. 

Moreover, he does not enjoy the intellectual benefit of a 
weekly visit to a town or village; his children have no school 
provided for them ; he and his M-ife cannot often go to church. 
He is deprived, too, of the numberless conveniences which the 
numerous villages and towns, even in the most recently settled 
free states, afford to the farmer there. If he needs the services 
of a carpenter, or tailor, or blacksmith, or wagon maker, of 
any mechanic, the farmer of the slave states must either set out 
on a long journey over bad roads, for fifty or sixty miles— or he 
must do without. In South Carolina, to this day, the country 
people are obliged, in this way, to make their own rude, heavy, 
inconvenient wagons, often M'ithout a tire on the wheels, which 
are not unfrequently of solid wood. They must make their own 
ill-fitting harness ; they must build their own rude cabins ; no 
mason, or plasterer, or carpenter, or skilled mechanic can be 
found to help them; on the rich plantations such mechanics are 
found — hut they are slaves. 

There is thus, in the condition of society which is created by 
the slave labor system, no room, and no encouragement for the 
free niechanic and the small farmer, who make u]) the bulk of 
our population in the free states, and whose industry, and tlirift 
and intelligence make the country prosperous and happy. 

Does any one ask why this is so? Why has slavery this 
singular and disastrous effect ? Because the wealthy own slaves, 
and " do not need the services of the free workingmen," to 
rpiote once more the words of Marion. The rich planter living 
upon his estate, owns his slave mechanics, goes ITorth or to Eu- 
rope when he wants to amuse himself, and has no interest in the 
social advancement of the county in which he happens to be 
settled. What should he care for schools f his children have 
tutors at home, or go to northern colleges. AVhy should he 
seek to form or elevate society around him i When he wants 
" company '' he goes to Charleston, or Savannah, or Mobile, or 
itTew Orleans, or New York. Why should he buy the small 
farmer's " truck " ? Eis own slaves raise all he toants. Whv 



36 HOW SLAVEEY INJUEES THE FEEE WOEKINGMANi 

slionlcl lie employ free mechanics ? He prefers to hwy a carpen- 
ter and sell him again when the work is done. Moreover, he 
wonld not help to support the village store, if there was one — 
for he buys his supplies at wholesale in the great city. He 
does not need the village tailor, for his clothes are made in ISTew 
York. His wife does not not employ the village milliner, for 
she gets her dresses from ^ew Orleans, or Kew York, or 
Paris. 

In short, the planter has no interest in the connty where he 
happens to own soil, except to raise as much cotton off the land 
as possible ; he spends the proceeds away from homo. 

WHY THE SLAVE STATES LACK CAPITAL. 

But with this, there has been a singular complaint amongst 
the planters, which meets one in almost every essay printed by 
DeBow ; a complaint of a lack of capital. " The south needs 
capital "" was the constant cry. " Our tanneries will not succeed, 
because of our limited capital," says a writer on the resources of 
Georgia. " For the last twenty years, floating capital, to the 
amount of $500,000 per annum has left Charleston, and gone 
out of the state " complained Governor Hammond, in a famous 
essay on Southern Industry. " Ninety millions of capital," he 
says in another place, " has been drained out of South Carolina 
in twenty years ;" and another writer, urging the establishment 
of manufactories in the south, admits that " we have not the 
capital to spare." We do not hear such complaints in the free 
states. Our workmen are not idle, our mines are not undevel- 
oped, our manufactories are not stopped for want of capital. 

But they would be, if the manufacturer — or mine owner — had 
not only to buy his machinery, l)utalso his luorhmeiii J^o com- 
pany, however wealthy, could afford to run a mill in Lowell, or 
work a coal mine in Pennsylvania, or keep up a furnace in Pitts- 
burgh, if it had to provide means, not only to pay for its machinery 
but to buy also its working men and women. All the industry 
of the free states would come to a stand still if this system 
should suddenly be forced npon us. No wonder the manu- 
facturing industry of the South was never set going " for lack of 
capital." 



WHY SLAVE STATES LACK CAPITAL. 37 

But this same miscliief has injured the South in other ways. 
Look, for instance, at this : Take two men, both farmers ; let one 
remove to Texas, the other to Iowa ; let each have his land pur- 
chased ; and have five thousand dollars over. Each needs a carpen- 
ter to build a comfortable house for him. The lowan gives 
notice in the newspapers — which are glad to print such intelli- 
gence — that carpenters can get higher wages in his neighborhood 
than farther East ; and he readily gets the services of an enter- 
prising young mechanic. But the Texan ? He must livij his 
carjpenter / he must pay probably two thousand dollars for the 
man. He has but three thousand left — the lowan has spent 
only the wages of a carpenter while he needed him. 

That done, each requires three laborers to clear and cultivate 
the new land. The lowan advertises, offers good wages, and 
gets his men without trouble ; the Texan must j^ciy out his re- 
maining three thousand dollars for three slaves. He has now 
all his money invested — the lowan, however, has yet the greater 
part of his in hand. He is able to purchase the best implements 
—but the Texan must manage without or run in debt. He i-^^ 
able to contril3ute to the building of a school and chm-ch ; but 
the Texan, in the first place, has no money left for such pur- 
poses ; and in the next place, the children of his slaves must 
not be educated. Therefore, his own children have no school or 
church. The lowan, having still say two thousand dollars in 
hand, .may set up a friend, in a mill, or a store — and both will 
be supported by the laboring population which he has gathered 
about him, who are earning wages and will purchase clothing and 
provisions. But the Texan has no money to loan for such enter- 
prises ; and if he had, they could not sncceed, for his slaves have 
no wages to spend, and he gets his supplies at wholesale, from 
his factor in IsTew Orleans or Shreveport. 

I^et any one, farmer or laboring man, answer, who is the most 
comfortable, whose children have the best chance to grow up 
intelligent, who has the most money at command, the Texan 
slave owner, or the lowan farmer? who builds up around 
liim the most quickly, a thriving connnunity ? who gives em- 
ployment to free mechanics ? whose skill and capital is most pro- 
ductive of wealth and progress, and happiness, to the neighbor- 
hood? 



38 HOW SLAVEET IN.IUEES THE FREE WORKINGMAN. 

We see by this instance, bow it is that in the Soiitb tbey 
always " bicked capitab" Tbe Texan emptied bis purse before 
be got fairly started ; tbe lowan bad money in band wben bis 
farm was tborongbly fnrnisbed. Tbe Texan was condemned 
by tbe slave system to live in solitude — tbe lowan at once, and 
necessarily, gathered a little company about liim, of working- 
men, and mecbanics, and tbeir families, and if be selected bis 
farm wisely, be saw witbin a year a little village spring up near 
bim, witb its schools, church, stores, and proper supply of me- 
chanics of different kinds. 

Mechanics and laboring men, rememher, tJiat the slave sj/s- 
tern leaves no room for you ! It shuts you out! The Southern 
planter does not need you ; he cannot bear your independent 
ways ; be " buys a carpenter wben he wants one." He and his 
fellow planters have, for lialf a century, shut up, against you 
and your families, tbe finest part of tbe Union ; while slavery 
lasts you can gain no foothold there, for every slaveholder is 
your enemy / your children can have no schools there ; you can 
have none of the conveniences of life ; you cannot even get em- 
ployment. But do away with the slave system, make all labor 
free, take away from the rich planter bis fatal monopoly, let 
every man who works be paid wages according to bis abibty, 
and let every employer pay just wages to bis workmen, and 
you can safely go to the Soutli, and take with you the society, 
the schools, the churches, tbe frccpient villages and towns, all 
tbe conveniences of civilization, which the sla\-e labor system 
has not. 

Slavery is the free workingman's worst enemy ; let this truth 
be spread abroad amongst you, free workingmen of the North 
and South ! Then, for your own sakes, and for tbe sake of your 
children, whom yoic do not wish to grow up in the overcroioded 
Norths let slavery die. In the South, if slavery is abolished, 
the wages of mechanics and laboring men must for many years 
to come be very high. That whole vast l-egion is almost with- 
out skilled labor ; free mechanics have been driven from it. A 
region greater than cdl the free states, as healthful, with a finer 
climate, more alnmdant mineral resources, cheaper lands and a 
richer soil, lies open before you, and your families. You have 
only to possess it, and witb your skill and energy subdue it. 



J^jS 



WHY SLAVE STATES LACK CAPITAL. 39 

Tlieii you will not feel the hard struggle which severe climate, 
and tenement houses, and lack of employment, and the op- 
pression caused by an overcrowded labor market, subjected 
you to in the ISTorth. But you can never enter that land of 
ease and 'plenty \ without first striking down your fatal enemy ^ 
slavery ! 



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